ABCUL’s virtual support for members in 2020

Like many organisations across the country, ABCUL closed its office in March 2020 and moved to remote service delivery and this has continued ever since.

As the situation changed rapidly ABCUL produced a dedicated page for members on its website to ensure they had all the latest information in once place – in the early weeks this was updated multiple times per day.

To support this and to create a sense of connection and community when many were feeling isolated, ABCUL also supported members through exclusive weekly online meetings. They attracted high attendance from across its membership – from every area of the country and of all sizes and business models. In total there were 3,109 attendances from 132 credit unions across 8 months and 29 meetings.

ABCUL CEO Robert Kelly said: “These meetings have been incredibly powerful during the extended lockdown period, evolving from a way for us to communicate key messages and answer questions to a mechanism for sharing good practice between credit unions across Britain and for us to listen to concerns, challenges and successes as our members all successfully quickly adapted their services to continue to meet their members’ needs and protect the health and safety of staff and volunteer teams.”

Additionally, ABCUL expanded its service to enable credit unions to host their AGMs online. In total it has successfully hosted 24 credit union AGMs from across the country since March and as 24 more scheduled to take place in early 2021.  Commenting on ABCUL’s support, a Chief Executive of one credit union said: “Your support in our virtual AGM both prior to the event and on the night has been exceptional.  I know both members and directors had some concerns about holding a virtual AGM but your support in preparations, the offer of a rehearsal session which I know our treasurer appreciated and your guidance through the AGM was excellent.”

Robert continued: “With co-operation and collaboration in mind we have and will continue to do everything in our power to support our members in 2020 and beyond.”